


Wonders to Perform

by Rubynye



Category: DC Comics
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gotham, One of My Favorites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:32:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tree grows in Gotham, and Robins fly through her branches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wonders to Perform

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [ Lord King Bad Fanfic Challenge](http://www.livejournal.com/community/dc_flashfiction/27258.html) is going to be the death of me.
> 
> Warnings: het, slash, femslash, OCs, character death.  
> Spoilers For/Based On: various Gotham-related storylines, the most recent of which being _War Crimes_.  
> Thanks to: [](http://petronelle.livejournal.com/profile)[**petronelle**](http://petronelle.livejournal.com/) for audiencing and [](http://vassilissa.livejournal.com/profile)[**vassilissa**](http://vassilissa.livejournal.com/) for beta reading.  
> Disclaimer: Some of these characters are mine. The ones you knew before reading the story aren't.   
> Title From: "[Light Shining Out of Darkness](http://www.bartleby.com/45/2/127.html)" by William Cowper

Title: Wonders to Perform  
Fandom: DC Comics  
Rating: R  
Summary: A tree grows in Gotham, and Robins fly through her branches.   
Pairings: Robins/assorted

 

You could say I've been lucky. Or you could say my luck stinks. I'm not sure either way. All I know is, I seem to get in trouble a lot, but it tends to turn out ok; I don't really have guardian angels so much as guardian Robins. They're a lot better, and hotter too.

I was born and raised in Gotham, and you know how Gotham is. When I was twelve, I was coming home late from my after school program, where there was some boy I liked I'd stayed to see. It was winter, so it was dark and windy, and I had my head down till I literally ran into a guy. A big, scary guy. He had a knife but he didn't even bother threatening me, he just picked me up by my shoulders, his grip painfully tight, and I was too scared to even scream. "Well look at this," he said with a big crooked-toothed grin, and all I could feel was the knife in his hand, pressed flat against my arm, cold through the jacket. "I think you just made my night, Sweet Cheeks. I hope you got some money on you---"

_Thunk._ A flash of red and green, and my knees hurt against the sidewalk, and my shoulders didn't hurt anymore. I looked up, and the guy was out cold with his hat lying in the gutter, and _Robin_ stood over him handcuffing him. He was the brightest thing under the streetlight, red and green and his yellow cape and his white teeth when he smiled at me. "Hey, are you ok?"

"Robin!" I'd been hearing about him for _years_. Some of my friends didn't believe he or Batman were real, but I always did, and now here he was! He was so tall, and so graceful and so cute, and he just looked like a hero, you know? With his mask and his shiny hair and his bright wide smile.

I was twelve, but I was a girl, and I'd been rescued, and I thought I knew what I was supposed to do. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. Besides, I was too busy staring at him to get up, and blushing so hard the air burned against my face, so when he came over to help me up I grabbed his arm, though the material was slick and slippery. He leaned close to me, and I kissed his cheek, warm under my mouth. He blushed, too, and held still, so I kissed him again right there and his cheek was even warmer.

Then he pulled away, and grinned at me, patting my hand before he gently pried it off his arm. "You're welcome," he said, and he didn't laugh at me. Go figure. "C'mon, let's get you up. Where do you live?"

"A- around the corner." I still remember how blue his eyes were. "Down Eccleston off Wilson."

As if little streets in Robbinsville meant anything to a superhero like Robin, but he nodded. "Go on, then. I'll look out for you. When you get there, lock the door and call the police for me, OK? Tell them a man attacked you and that he's waiting for them under the third streetlight."

"And that Robin saved me!" He grinned, snowflakes melting on his pink cheeks, and waved at me as he flew up off the ground. I wanted to watch him go, but I heard the thug groan like he was waking up, so I took off around the corner. But I'd been rescued! By Robin! I couldn't stop talking about it for _weeks_.

Three years later one of my friends showed me an article in the paper about how Robin was dead, and I cried myself sick. He couldn't be dead! He was Robin! But it turned out he wasn't, but he went to New York and became Nightwing with the Teen Titans there. We talked a lot about whether Batman had fired him, or he'd just grown up and gotten his own city, or whatever. My friends liked to tease me that it was because of one of the girls on his team so I had no chance, but it's not like I was ever going to go out with Robin. I sometimes wished I'd given him a real kiss, though.

Then there was a new Robin, but I had better things to worry about, because my mother was murdered.

You know how Gotham is. One day she just didn't come home; the police said the guy was a notorious serial killer named Zsasz, and that they'd locked him up in Arkham. Dad made a lot of noise about moving us somewhere safe, but all he did was start drinking, so in a way I lost both my parents. Which is, of course, incredibly selfish of me to say, but hey, I was a kid, it's how I felt.

So I started running around, looking for people who'd pay attention to me. My dad didn't notice, and the only other family I had were my mom's sisters who lived across the city, and in a place as big as Gotham they might as well've been on the Moon. I spent my few bucks on teeny clothes and high heels, and I ran around with anyone who noticed me, and I felt completely hollow.

One summer night I was dressed in a few spangles and cheap jewelry and my highest heels, teetering up a dark alleyway trying a shortcut to reach a well-lighted main street where I could catch the bus. My latest jerkwad date had turned out to be a druggie, and some things are just too dangerous, you know? So I told him to take me home and he threw me out of his car, and there I was on my ridiculous spike heels, tottering down the sidewalk through the sticky summer heat.

A girl should know not to take shortcuts in Gotham. Long and short of it, I was nearly there when two guys chased me back into the alley, and I fell off those damn heels. I remember looking up at the bright lights of the street beyond them and thinking about how I'd nearly made it. I remember staring up as they stood over me and wondering if they'd kill me when they were done with me, what my dad would do if Gotham took all of his family. I remember wanting to live with all my heart.

And then I heard "Hey, assholes!"

The second Robin was really different from the first in some ways. He wasn't as tall, not much taller than me, and I think he wasn't as old as I was, since his voice was husky and kind of unfinished-sounding. But he was tough. He looked tough, with these broad shoulders and these big thighs, and he _moved_ like he was tough, and he kicked fifteen kinds of shit out of those guys. When he reached down to help me up I was almost scared, if I could've been scared of Robin, that he'd be rough with me.

He wasn't. He held my hand like I was made of feathers, and when he did something to his mask his eyes were blue too, blue and dark and strangely pretty for such a sturdy boy. And he smiled at me, and all I could think was that I wasn't hurt, wasn't being raped, wasn't dead, because of him.

So I kissed him. And he laughed and kissed me back with a warm soft mouth, before he pulled away and said, "C'mon, we should get outta here." I nodded and picked up my purse, and I don't know what I was expecting, but he wrapped his arm around my waist and shot his swinging-line-thing and we were _flying_.

The city flowed by in a rush of air and light, and I thought I was going to _die_, in a completely different way from five minutes before. I shrieked and clutched his cape, and he laughed and laughed, but he'd just saved my _ life_, I figured he deserved a good laugh at the silly girl clutching him and making scared noises.

He landed us on the roof of one of the skyscrapers, and I'd never been up so high, ever. Not even when I took music classes at the Breyfogle Institute. I felt like I was still whooshing around, like the building was rocking beneath me, so I grabbed the railing to steady myself and pressed my stocking feet against the concrete as I stared out at the ocean of lights below us.

"Hey," said Robin, patting my arm, and his glove wasn't rough, but it was nubbly, you know? Like it was textured to grip things. I don't know why I remember that particular detail. "Hey, you're not freaking out, are you?"

"No, I'm fine," I lied through chattering teeth. I could feel the hysterics rising, and I really didn't want to cry on Robin, and I wanted to kiss him again. So I did.

This time he didn't stop kissing me. I ended up with my back pressed to the concrete lip of the roof, a fifty-story drop behind me and Robin all over me and it was the hottest thing ever. Sometime in there he dropped the gloves, and his hands were big enough to fit around my arms and tingly-rough over my ribs, and he tasted like sweat and muscle when I gave him a hickey, so I gave him another. It was completely crazy, making out with a vigilante boy whose name I didn't even know, and it was such a rush, listening to someone that strong curse and shake because of what I was doing to him.

He got me back, of course. He laughed and pushed me against the wall, and his suit was so slick and hard under my hands as he kissed me till I moaned. He had one hand pulling my hair and the other on my breast, and he was giving me a hickey and his mask was cool against my cheek while his mouth was so hot on my neck; I was bucking against one of those big thighs of his and trying to decide if I should blow him or jerk him off and how many times it would be fair to come first, when I realized my eyes were open. I realized that because the darkness _moved_, just before a deep voice said, "Robin."

I think I squeaked.

Robin went stiff all over, but then he laughed against my neck. "Oops," he said, lifting his head. "Busted."

Batman took one step forward, just enough to be a shape in the shadows. I thought about tossing myself over the railing, but I think Robin realized that, because he squeezed my shoulders as he let go of me and stood up. "Hey, boss," he said, pulling me to my feet and pretty much holding me up. I couldn't really stand. My knees wouldn't work.

"What. Are you doing." I don't think I ever heard such a deep voice in my entire life.

Robin shrugged. "At least I'm not scaring anyone right now, which is more than I can say about you."

"Take the girl to safety. Then return. Immediately." Batman looked so--- he was just _huge_, huge and dark and glowering. I couldn't imagine how anyone could stand up to him.

Robin stuck out his lip, and sighed ostentatiously, but he didn't argue. It's not like I would've expected him to. When he smiled at me I felt a little less like throwing up. "C'mon, you gotta stop shaking so hard, if I'm gonna get you down from here."

I nodded, and tried, but it'd kind of been an evening, even before Batman showed up, and I realized with horror that I was going to cry. Robin rolled his eyes and pulled on his gloves, and grabbed me and swung me down before I could start. I was shaking so hard I hardly felt the ride; I just clung to him till he got me on the ground.

"Here," he said, gently peeling me off. "Go in and get a pair of slippers or something, ok?" I looked around, and we were at a bus stop in front of a little clothes store. I nodded, looking up at him, unable to talk, and he grinned and flew up into the night.

That's when I realized that he still had my bra. Either that, or I left it on the rooftop, with Batman.

And I sat down at the bus stop and bawled.

Well, embarrassment never killed anyone, and it didn't kill me. In fact, that night became a funny story pretty quickly. My friends teased me about Robin until he disappeared as well, and then they kept asking me whenever the subject came up what I thought had happened to him. Some people said they thought he was in juvie hall, "where a vigilante kid belonged," and it was hard not to get mad at that. OK, it was harder than I could manage, and I got into some fights over it. So it took awhile for anyone to tell me the rumor that the Joker had killed him, and when they did I didn't believe it. The last Robin had turned up somewhere else, and I thought this one would too. Robins didn't die.

Then there was a new Robin. A friend of mine saw him, and said he was a little guy with a black cape and spiky hair, but I never saw more than blurry long-shots in the paper. My dad dried out, and that was rough, but I believed in him as hard as I could, and it helped. He got a job, and then a transfer to one of those shining tall Gotham skyscrapers, and I loved visiting his office and looking out the windows at the city small and glittery below, and remembering being up even higher with Robin.

Dad went in early the day the earthquake hit.

I remember that frantic morning right up till the moment I realized that if the skyscrapers had fallen over he had to be dead. I guess it just... I never had any hope, I just knew. My mother just never came home one day. It made sense that my father didn't, either.

I don't remember much of the day after that.

Eventually I wound up with my college friends in the ruins of campus. Those of us who lived in Gotham went home for supplies until a couple of us didn't come back and the rest found our homes had ended up in someone else's territory. After that we all stayed together at college, and the Communists made asses of themselves being right, and the Libertarians just made asses of themselves. There were a lot of arguments, till the food got scarcer, and the weather turned colder, and the gangs got more violent, and being an ass became a luxury people couldn't afford anymore.

It was No Man's Land, and I had to choose, and I chose to stay. I never found my two aunts; I figured they'd died, too. So I had no one but my friends, where was I going to go? Some refugee camp? Gotham was what I knew. I stayed. I got thinner like most of us did, and I learned first aid from the nursing school students, and I cut off my hair because I couldn't condition it, and I guided my non-Gothamite friends around what was left of the city. I learned to cook from scratch, to sew clothes and search ruins; I'd thought I knew how to survive, but No Man's Land was when I really learned.

Actually, when it wasn't scary, it was an adventure. Climbing around in the rubble, hunting for useable stuff, talking around a fire at night, not having clocks running our days; it was wild, both pre- and post-civilization at once. On the winter solstice someone made up some vaguely pagan reason to dance around our fires till we laughed sweating in the cold. When the East Bridge Bruisers attacked our campus to loot our stuff and take the library books for fuel, I found out I could even help there, dropping rocks and bricks on them just like they were trying to storm our castle. In some ways I never felt so alive.

When it wasn't terrifying. When it wasn't horrible. When no one was sick or starving or dying; I saw all three happen to people who were way too young. When I didn't have to do things I'd rather not remember. Some people spout romantic bullshit about those days, and I don't want to be one of them.

Anyway, things eventually got better. The police established regular patrols. The gangs got more... civilized; I sang a lot as payment for stuff, passage and salvage rights and sometimes food, and it was nice to be safe enough to do that.

I saw Nightwing once, when I was out looking for useful things. I saw two gangs about to fight, and hid behind some crumpled rebar hoping that neither side would shoot me, but they were between a tent neighborhood and a patched-up building full of families, so either way it was going to be bad. Then Nightwing dropped right into the middle of it, and... I can't even describe how amazing he was. Saying he looked like he was dancing isn't even enough, since he was in the air most of the time, and no one could touch him, and he had fifteen guys down in five minutes, if that much. And no one got shot.

By the time they were all down I had my hand stuffed in my mouth and my heart thumping against my ribs and I thought I'd been quiet, but he smiled over his shoulder right at where I was hidden, grinning that same grin he'd had when he was Robin, right at me.

That was nice.

Anyway. The government came back to the city (hoo and ray) and life returned from the Stone Age, and I got an apartment with my two best friends. The free legal assistance people funded by Wayne Enterprises took my case and got me my father's money, so I went to culinary school. Despite having to get used to alarm clocks again, I liked my life.

I still lived in Gotham, though. And Gotham is Gotham.

It was raining the day some costumed freak busted in the roof of my school, looking for a girl he felt belonged to him or something. I don't know. I don't even remember his name. I may have gotten tougher during No Man's Land, but I'm not a cop or a hero; I ran to the nearest phone and called the cops, and then I just ran.

Unfortunately, one of his goons saw me, and tackled me. Maybe I looked like the girl they were hunting, I don't know. I was struggling with the guy, and he was flattening me against the wall with frightening efficiency, when his eyes went wide behind his mask and he went down.

Behind him stood Robin, with a shining grin and a big puff of bright blond hair.

_That_ was when I slid to my knees.

Go ahead and laugh, but you would've, too. She was stunning. The roof was broken over us, it was raining and dripping mud, but she was nothing but bright from her tights to her hair to her lipstick as she smiled at me. "Hey, are you all right?" She knelt and brushed crumbs of drywall out of my hair, and I just wanted to push into her touch. I'd been wet and scared and cold, but now I was warm, because Robin had rescued me.

Yeah, yeah, I know, but life in Gotham can do worse things to a girl.

"I'm fine," I managed to say, and "thank you," and because I couldn't help myself I leaned in to kiss her cheek. She held still for it till the last moment, then flicked her head around to meet my mouth with her shiny Robin-red lips, so fast the ends of her hair brushed my face.

I gasped, and she bit my bottom lip lightly, giggling. "You're welcome," she said with a grin so big it almost wasn't weird to look into blank white lenses.

Then she stood up, pulling me up with her, and stepped back. "I've got cleanup to do. Just keep heading that way and you'll be fine, ok?" She turned, cape flaring behind her, and ran into the wreck of the building. I watched her till I couldn't see her anymore, and then I ran out.

I really liked having that memory.

I really didn't like being wrong about whether Robins could die.

People die. You know I know that. My friend Candace, whom I'd known since we were little girls, who went to high school with me and teased me about the Robins and went to college with me and became my roommate after No Man's Land... my friend Candace dated the wrong girl, and I came home during the gang wars to find her dead in the middle of the living room, her blood all over the walls, because her girlfriend was in a gang.

I wasn't actually angry at the guy who killed my mother. I couldn't be angry at an earthquake for happening. But I was mad at Candace's girlfriend, for getting her killed. Go figure. Not that there was anything to do about it. I'm not like that.

Without Candace... Even after we cleaned everything up, after we got new furniture, Zoe and I kept looking at each other across the empty space in the place, and seeing Candace. So we gave the apartment up; I got a little studio of my own, and one night while I was watching TV and unpacking, I surfed onto a news report. About Robin.

Stephanie Brown had been her name. And she'd been younger than I thought. And she was dead. And if she was dead.... maybe the second Robin, who never reappeared, had died as well. I thought of him, kissing me on a rooftop, and I thought of her lifting me to my feet, and I thought of Candace laughing at my stories, and I cried myself to sleep that night.

Hey, I never told you I was rational.

My new place was nice, but the streets around it were a little tangled and confusing. A couple nights later I got completely lost in a maze of dark alleys. One day I'm going to buy myself a GPS. There were fewer police around those days, right after the gang war; some people blame Batman for that, and I was thinking about if I did, and shivering, and trying not to freak out, when I heard a noise behind me. Just a little scraping noise, but I wasn't waiting for more. I took off running towards the nearest lighted street.

Right into a tall girl's hands.

I wanted to kick myself, but I was pretty sure they were going to do it for me. She tossed me back at her fellow muggers, and I fell on my ass and tried not to look scared, not that I was fooling anybody. I threw my purse sideways, and only one of them even watched it. The one with the plank of wood just slapped her palm and grinned at me like a dog at a cornered rat.

At least cornered rats are dangerous, which was more than I could say for myself. I tossed my arms over my head and waited for the beating. I hate watching my life flash before my eyes.

_Thock. Thump._ "Ow!" _Smack._

I was fine. Nothing'd touched me. Something whirled around me and the girl in front of me shrieked and fell.

I was still fine.

A few scuffing sounds, a few soft _thwumps_.

I looked up.

Robin was wrapping a plastic strip around the wrists of the girl who'd caught me, who was unconscious and face down. When I looked behind me the other two girls were slumped back-to-back, their wrists tied together.

Oh.

"Uh," I said, and Robin finished his work and looked up at me. He didn't smile. His cape fell around him so he was barely visible in the dark alley. He was... he reminded me of Batman, and you can guess that it wasn't exactly reassuring.

But it was really, really safe.

"Are you hurt?" Robin crouched next to me, just out of my arm's reach, looking me up and down like an EMT would, checking to see if I could get up on my own or not. I was bruised by my fall but pretty much fine, but I couldn't reach for him. He wasn't touchable like the other Robins had been.

"I-- I'm fine." I staggered to my feet. He watched me, but he didn't move towards me; instead he brushed off his knees and stood up. He was going to be gone, any second, and...

"Thanks," I blurted.

He looked at me, or maybe through me.

"Um, thanks. For saving my ass. I---" Managed to stop myself in mid-babble.

The flat line of his mouth curled a little on one side. "Aikido," he said.

"Huh?"

"Take Aikido. It would suit your body type. And a self-defense class." He was already stepping back, dark cape fading into dark shadows, while all I could do was blink till I was alone in an alley with three unconscious girls. It wasn't hyper-real, like the other times I'd met Robins. It was surreal, like a hallucination.

Then my purse fell at my feet, and I heard, "you're welcome," from over my head. And I felt myself being watched my whole way home. It felt incredibly creepy, and completely safe.

I took Robin's advice. As if I wouldn't. I took Aikido, and got a brown belt, and the self-defense classes were really fascinating so I took some more advanced ones, and I remembered some things I'd forgotten since No Man's Land. I also met a guy in my classes, another O.G. who'd stayed with his sister and her family. They all kind of liked me. In fact, they pretty much adopted me. It was nice to have a family again.

All this meant that one bright springtime day I was shopping with Beth and her daughters, and we were laughing as we headed for the park, not really looking where we were going, when a guy with a knife blocked our way and demanded our purses. Something in me just… snapped. I didn't feel scared, I felt angry. And then he leered at Sasha, and I---

Well, just, _no_. I took two steps in front of Beth, tossing my hair to make him look at me, and told him to go the fuck away as I flipped him off.

He lunged right at me, just like I knew he would. I took the knife out of his hand and banged its hilt into his other wrist; he backed up, clutching it and howling, and I kicked him in the chest and then in the head.

He went right down with a whimper, right at my feet.

I have to say, it was kind of a rush. I could've kicked him a few hundred more times, but there's such a thing as overdoing it. Instead I pushed Beth and the girls back in case the guy was faking, and screamed till some help came running in the shape of two officers. "He attacked us with this!" I shrieked, acting freaked-out, and handed over the knife, hoping my fluttery performance would distract them from the fact that we were all standing and the thug was on the ground.

It seemed to work. Soon enough we were out of there, shopping bags and all.

"Wow," said Sasha, and I turned to hug her reassuringly, but she was smiling at me. So was Andie. So was Beth. "Wow. You saved us!"

"I just disabled him so we could get away," I said, blushing. I hadn't really thought about it; I just did it. "I just-- I wasn't going to go back to Uncle Brian and tell him I let anything happen to his favorite girls."

Those girls were on a roll. "You were awesome!" "A total hero!" "Like someone on TV!" "Just like Robin!" Beth nodded vigorously, and unpeeled one arm from around Sasha to wrap it around my shoulders and squeeze me.

Just like Robin. I think my face almost caught fire, I blushed so hot, but it was a really good kind of red.

**Author's Note:**

> Post-story note: So she hasn't got violet eyes unless you imagined her that way, but she _can_ sing. So is she a "mere" author stand-in or a full fledged Mary Sue? Either way I hope she was fun to read. This challenge is being a blast.


End file.
